Bonded
by Silken Danser
Summary: Ginny forms a bond with Harry at the end of the Fifth book. What will happen next year? GW/HP pairing. OnHold


Disclaimer: I own nothing! I swear!

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Ginny ran into the chamber just in time to see Voldemort disappear. As a shadow covered Harry, he snapped into a tense, curled position, looking (as much as it was possible for a human to) like a coiled snake. She realized what had happened even faster than Professor Dumbledore, and was by Harry's side when he started to convulse under the effects of having Voldemort in his mind.

Unknown to any except herself and Professor Snape, she had also been taking private Legilimancy lessons this last year. She had known that Harry failed spectacularly when it came to closing his mind, and she had hoped that by learning Legilimancy herself she would be able to somehow protect him. She had had to agree to cleaning and organizing an obsene amount of potions ingredients to convince Prof. Snape to teach her.

Ginny knew what she had to do, and that she had to do it before anyone could stop her. Her allies might try to stop her from endangering herself and her enemies would try to prevent her from helping Harry.

"Harry! Harry look at me dammit!" she grabbed his hair and forced him to face her. Even though his eyes were open, they were fluttering around and unable to focus. She did the only thing she could think of to make Harry look at her.

She slapped him. Hard. The resounding crack made Hermione, Luna, and Neville (who were standing loosely behind Professor Dumbledore) all flinch.

Harry reacted immediately, his eyes latched onto hers and, obviously under Voldemort's influence, wrapped his hands around her throat and started squeezing.

As soon as he made eye contact she rasped, "Legilimens!" and was immediately in Harry's mind. Or rather, she was on the outskirts of his mind. He was fully preoccupied at the moment with attempting to fight Voldemort off. All she could feel from him was intense pain, both emotional and physical. It felt like there was a roiling barrier comprised of Voldemort's poisonous thoughts standing in between her and Harry.

Voldemort was completely wrapped around Harry's mind, attacking and torturing him as only a truly evil being could, and Ginny was outside. She needed to get through all of that evilness to help Harry. So, remembering what Professor Dumbledore had said about Voldemort not being able to stand love, she formed herself a kind of shield using her love for Harry.

Sure, she knew it was dangerous, that she could potentially be handing Voldemort a weapon, but she had no choice. She would have to use every single feeling she had for Harry, all of her pent up emotions from the passing years. Forming a tight shield around her mind made from her love for Harry to protect herself, she forced herself to focus her mind on remimbering all of the small moments in time where she caught Harry just being himself.

Him looking out of a castle window with the sunlight shining on his hair and making his green eyes glow. Laughing together at the Burrow, so hard that they had collapsed together into a pile on the ratty couch. Playing in the snow on the castle grounds, throwing snowballs at each other.

While replaying her tender memories, a single truth seemed to suddenly punched her in the chest, displacing her breath. Her silly, girl-crush on Harry had grown into love, true, adult, unadultured love. And it was this newfound, already suspected but not truly known truth that she formed with an iron will into a spear.

She used this spear to punch her way through Voldemort's presence in Harry's mind. She fought against the malice needling her defences on every side. She could feel the darkness creeping in, pushing at her shield, causing her mind to sieze up with pain and instincual terror at being faced with true evil. But she grit her metiphorical teeth and pushed on, she fought and struggled against Voldemort until finally. Finally! She broke through into the relative safety of Harry's mind.

He was struggling with imposed visions of Sirius's death, the death of his parents, and every other horrible thing Voldemort could think of to torture him with. Images of broken, bloody bodies floated through her mind, images of terror. Crows tore at the mutilated bodies of people Ginny recognized, spiders hissed and bite at her, somehow managing to make her feel their fangs, phantom snakes constricted around her phantom body.

Ginny dug her way through the visions of terror and death, seeming to barely keep her own sanity, only to be bombarded by Harry's feelings of pain, fear, desperation, vulnerability, guilt, an overwhelming sense of loss, feelings that he wasn't good enough, that he was tainted, and other things that Ginny didn't want to feel. And she was feeling, everything. All of Harry's pain both emotional and physical, _it physically hurt to have such immense evil in your mind_, all of Harry's tortured emotions, thoughts, and physical pain became hers.

She wrestled with him a moment, struggling to get past Harry's tumultuous emotions and into his mind. Ginny knew she had to hurry, Harry's hands were slowly squeezing the life out of her. She could faintly feel the physical pain in her throat as it was slowly crushed, bruising delicate tissues and making it harder and harder for her to receive enough oxigin.

Eventually, she pretty much just had to shove her way through, and into Harry's innermost mind where she could help him. Her mind intimately brushed up against his, her inner most self brushing up against his, she could feel his thoughts as if they were her own and she could feel Harry, his essence, _him_.

___Think of your friends, think of everyone and everything you love._Ginny thought to him, almost finding it humorous when his mind gave a violent start. She could feel his shock.

___What the . . . Ginny?_Yes that was definitely him.

___He can't stand positive emotion, Harry._She thought back at him, he was in such a state of shock that he seemed to have temporarily forgotten about Voldemort. She actually had to force memories into his mind, sharing pranks Fred and George had played on Mum, she gave Harry her memories of some of the more dorky things Ron had done over the years.

Harry, to his credit, caught on almost immediately and started thinking about Ron and Hermione, how they sounded more and more like an old married couple every day. He thought about Dobby, and how he would give Harry socks for Christmas. He thought about playing Quidditch. He thought about Sirius, and how much he had loved him.

Harry's intense love for his dead Godfather was what finally did it. Voldemort just couldn't take it anymore and threw himself violently out of Harry's mind. Unfortunately, Ginny accidently made his retreat a tad awkward and unententionally got in his way. In this odd situation the old expression of 'three's a crowd' turned out have more than a grain of truth.

She was thrown viciously out of Harry's mind along with Voldemort and pain shot through her very being. She felt distictly like a bludger that had just been hit by a very strong beater.

But something strange happened in the space of the millisecond it took for her to be painfully yanked back into her own body. Not that she'd actually _left _her body. Ginny felt something click or pop in the mind-connection she had with Harry, and she knew, somehow, that a bond had been created.


End file.
